More bloody rites and solemn liturgies occurred for those who still had the stamina, followed by a day of formal rejoicing and the real start of the great festival. The reward for lasting out the blood and violence was a general carnival. Citizens of all ranks donned improbable masks and disguises. Thus freed from being recognized, they indulged in improbable behavior too. Shocking. The priests of the cult, who were normally confined to their enclosure on the Palatine on the grounds that they were foreign and frenzied, were now let out for an annual bash. Flutes, drums, and trumpets pounded out strange eastern music with unnerving rhythms as they whirled through the streets. The sacred image of the goddess, a silver statue, its head mystically represented by a great black stone from Pessinus, was taken to the Tiber and washed. The sacrificial implements were also cleaned up, then transported home in showers of rose petals.
Alongside the processional elements ran a secret women's orgy, famous for positively Bacchic scenes. Women who ought to know better tried to revive the old traditions, though in the new Flavian mood of respectability they were onto a loser there. "I can assure you," Helena assured me gravely, "after the doors are closed to men, all that really happens is mint tea and gossip." She then claimed that the rumors of frenetic debauchery were just a confidence trick to cause worry to the male sex, and I believed her, of course.
The Games started three days after the Kalends of April. Once again a procession bore the sacred image through the streets in a chariot, with the priests of the cult singing Greek hymns and collecting coins from the populace. (Always a useful way for people to dispose of out-of-date and foreign small change.) The chief priest took a prominent role; he was supposed to be a eunuch, a fact borne out by his wearing a purple frock, a veil, long hair under an exotic eastern turban with a peaked top and ear-lappets, necklaces, and a portrait of the goddess on his breast, while carrying a basket of fruit to symbolize abundance, plus a bundle of cymbals and flutes. Conch shells boomed alarmingly. It ought to be terribly exotic, a grim cult that should probably be expelled from the city, but for those who wanted to believe that Trojan Aeneas had founded Rome, then Mount Ida was where Aeneas hewed the wood for his ships and the Great Idaean Mother was the mythical mother of our race; Cybele was here to stay. You could see it as a lot more respectable than us all being descended from a pair of murderous twins who had been fostered by a she-wolf.
Once the Games started, we endured several days of earnest drama in the theaters. Then the chariot races took place in the Circus Maximus, with the statue of Cybele enthroned on the spina beside the central obelisk. She had been carried there in the solemn entry procession on a litter placed in a chariot drawn by tame lions. That had depressed me, remembering Leonidas.
By the time of the races I was in an oddly detached mood. The exotic rituals of the Megalesis had reinforced it. Normally one to avoid such festivals, I found myself taking part in the public gawping, yet in a gray spirit. This was Rome. Alongside the archaic mysteries of religion, other more sinister traditions still flourished: unfair patronage, grinding establishment snobbery, and the harsh cult of blighting the aspirations of the little man. Nothing would change.
It was with relief that we had reached the races and gladiatorial displays. That first ceremonial start, with the president of the Games clad in triumphal uniform as he led in the participants through the main gate of the Circus Maximus, was always more vital than any of the succeeding summer shows. It heralded a new dawn. Winter was over. The procession trod on a carpet of spring flowers. The open-roofed theaters and circuses would hum with life again. The streets would abound with life by day and night. Competitive arguments would dominate public discussion. The ancillary trades-snack sellers, betting touts, prostitutes-would flourish. And there was always a chance that the Blues would drive the Greens off the racetrack and come in victorious.
In fact the one bright spot in my life that April was that my team coasted home. It always carried the secondary benefit that any discomfiture of their arch rivals the Greens upset my brother-in-law Famia. That spring the Greens were fielding lousy teams; even the big Cappadocian grays of whom Famia had boasted to me so outrageously on the day the leopardess escaped were actually shipwrecked first time out. In between drowning his sorrows, Famia kept trying to persuade his faction to adopt a radical new purchase strategy, while the Blue teams thundered past them time and again and I enjoyed myself sniggering.
Work was slack. The Census assessments were tailing off, as they had been bound to. To help him forget how Laeta had cruelly axed his sick pay, Anacrites busied himself tidying up final reports that were already satisfactory; I left him to grumble and tinker. Instead, one fine, bright day when most of Rome was feeling optimistic, I had volunteered to help Thalia present her wonderdog in his first public acting role. It was, of course, unthinkable for a respectable citizen to appear in a stage performance. But I felt gloomy and obstreperous; breaking the rules suited me just fine. I only pushed it to the limit: all I had to do was look after the dog when he was offstage.
The pantomime was at the Theater of Marcellus. It took place at the end of the morning, just before everyone transferred to the Circus Maximus for the races and gladiatorial displays which would happen after lunch. This was a temporary measure: the great stone Amphitheater of Statilius Taurus where gladiators used to perform had been destroyed in Nero's Great Fire ten years ago. The flamboyant new Flavian creation at the end of the Forum had been designated its formal replacement, but while that was being built the Circus Max stood in. Being the wrong shape, it was not entirely successful, so today we had an extra few hours of theatricals.
A lively program had been advertised for later in the afternoon at the Circus: gladiators, a formal venatio, and to start with an execution of prisoners. One of them, finally, was to be the mass murderer Thurius.
Thurius, in whom I had such an interest, would be dispatched by a new trained lion, the property of an importer called Hannobalus who had a curious history: although he was wealthier than anyone else Anacrites and I had investigated, we had been forced to conclude that this man's Census declaration was unimpeachable.
He came from Sabratha, but was otherwise a mystery man. As far as we were ever able to tell, he had told the Censors nothing but the truth-with an insolence that seemed to say he was doing so well in his business that deception was beneath him. We never met him; there was nothing in his accounts to make us demand an interview. He seemed to have a complete contempt for cheating-or as Saturninus, Calliopus, and all our other subjects for study would call it, the finer points of accountancy. This man had paid an enormous tax bill as casually as if it were a snack-bar tab for two rissoles. His lion was reckoned to be first-rate too.
With my mind on the execution, it was hard to give Thalia's trained dog his due. However, we had planned that if he was a success I would turn the event to my advantage, so I had to concentrate. It was a comedy with a large cast of characters, its frenetic scenes accompanied by Thalia's circus orchestra-a fine ensemble which included the strenuous tones of long trumpets, circular horns, and Sophrona the sweetly pretty water-organist. As the organ boomed a throbbing crescendo the dog trotted out, with his coat burnished and his tail up. Pretty quickly the audience allowed themselves to be won over by Anethum's appealing personality. He was a charmer, and he knew it. Like every playboy since antiquity, he was utterly brazen; the crowd knew they ought to have seen through him, but they let him get away with it.